“A global shortage of cyber security professionals is impacting New Zealand as government departments, corporations and businesses compete for talent, in response to an increasing number of cyber-attacks. Current estimates show up to one million cybersecurity job openings with demand expected to rise to 6 million globally by 2019. We are partnering with organisations in the local market to help fill the pipeline of cybersecurity experts. Wintec is one of New Zealand's largest and leading Institutes of Technology and has an impeccable reputation for training excellence − we hope to continually grow such strong partnerships in the region.”

Klaus Reiter, Industry Engagement Director at Wintec:

“Wintec is excited to partner with Fortinet, following our IT industry research results, where cybersecurity topped the list of essential skills for a bright career in IT today. FNSA is a great platform to provide our students with advanced IT skills and certifications that will boost their employment prospects, while gaining recognition in the industry within an elite group of security professionals. Wintec is committed to providing a skilled workforce that meets the needs of the IT industry and matches with the economic and employment priorities of New Zealand.”

News Summary:

Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today announced that Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec) will be the first educational institution in New Zealand to offer the Fortinet Network Security Academy (FNSA) program. The FNSA is designed to develop and train action-oriented cybersecurity experts to manage new and advanced threats on the horizon.

The Academy will provide industry-recognised cybersecurity training and certification opportunities to students who will learn how to protect organisations from cyber threats. Fortinet will arm the Wintec team with the skills required to teach the program through extensive staff development, who already possess a strong knowledge base having cleared the prestigious NSE4 certification by Fortinet.

Students will be prepared at international FNSA sites for success in a career in network security, obtaining both the theoretical lectures and hands-on laboratory practice needed to achieve a Fortinet certification. The Academy brings the training and certification opportunities previously only offered to Fortinet customers and partners to educational institutions, non-profit organisations and veterans programs.

Wintec provides its students with the option of getting the FNSA certification alongside their degrees in Applied Information Technology, and encourages participation through incentives, such as free course vouchers, for students pursuing certification for the first time.

Multiple studies demonstrate the cybersecurity labour shortage and the dire need for additional experts. British insurance company Lloyd’s, for instance, estimated that cyberattacks cost businesses as much as US$400 billion a year. The key verticals under attack include healthcare, financial services, education and technology companies with the top threats including malware, botnets and application exploits. Fortinet’s latest Q4 2017 Threat Landscape Report stated a 25 percent increase in malware families, while 274 exploit detections per firm were reported, which is a significant increase of 82 percent over the previous quarter.

Wintec has witnessed an increase in the demand for courses aimed at careers in cybersecurity, and 80 percent of its IT students have enrolled for the FNSA certification program.

FNSA was created to address the international shortage of cybersecurity experts and to build a workforce skilled in all aspects of Fortinet’s end-to-end network Security Fabric, who will be trained in state-of-the-art lab environments through experienced instructors.

Registrations of interest are open at Wintec, for the second semester, from June 2018. To apply visit http://www.wintec.ac.nz/

About Fortinet

Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) secures the largest enterprise, service provider, and government organizations around the world. Fortinet empowers its customers with intelligent, seamless protection across the expanding attack surface and the power to take on ever-increasing performance requirements of the borderless network - today and into the future. Only the Fortinet Security Fabric architecture can deliver security features without compromise to address the most critical security challenges, whether in networked, application, cloud or mobile environments. Fortinet ranks #1 in the most security appliances shipped worldwide and more than 350,000 customers trust Fortinet to protect their businesses. Learn more at https://www.fortinet.com, the Fortinet Blog, or FortiGuard Labs.